The beating was so thorough and one-sided, in fact, that many felt referee Mario Yamasaki was remiss in not jumping in and giving Shevchenko the win via TKO. Instead, Shevchenko ultimately had to force Cachoeira to tap out to a submission in the second round… which was about five minutes too much of a mauling no one wanted to see.

Obviously, poor matchmaking is partially to blame. But it’s hard to ignore the notion that Yamasaki’s job is to protect the fighters, and he failed at his job.

UFC boss Dana White was understandably a bit upset over the whole debacle.